


There Are Imposters Among Us

by DashFlintceschi



Series: Prompt Table [22]
Category: All Time Low (Band), Bring Me The Horizon, One Direction (Band), You Me At Six
Genre: AU: Among Us setting, Abduction, M/M, Murder, Murderous alien imposters, Outer Space, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DashFlintceschi/pseuds/DashFlintceschi
Summary: Three years into a journey to explore a new planet, things suddenly start going wrong. The ship, not the best example of cutting edge technology to begin with, starts having bigger issues, sometimes almost lethal ones. They think it’s just an old ship struggling with the long journey, until they're proven wrong in worse ways than they could ever have imagined.
Relationships: Dan Flint/Louis Tomlinson
Series: Prompt Table [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/510521





	There Are Imposters Among Us

**Author's Note:**

> Number 37 - Suspicion
> 
> For those not familiar with the Skeld map of Among Us, [see here](https://preview.redd.it/fqbtwed9l5o51.jpg?width=1366&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=52ccb4f2d6668500ab22e11e31de8a5f7d18076d)

Dan sighs in relief as the lights on the panel finally stop flashing an ominous red. He gives it another minute to make sure the machine won’t fail and stop filling the ship with oxygen again, but it keeps humming away and the lights continue to twinkle green reassuringly. Finally he takes off the helmet of his bright red suit and activates his comm. 

“Oxygen’s back, we’re all good.” He announces to the rest of his crew, smiling a little at the crackly cheers and sighs of relief he gets back. He leaves the O2 room then, making the long trek back to the electrical room where he’d been replacing the wires when the alarm had gone off. It bothers him that they have to spend so much of their time fixing various parts of the ship, they only left Earth a little over 3 years ago. Yeah, the ship wasn’t exactly new or the pinnacle of cutting edge technology even when they left, but it shouldn’t be falling apart like this.

He forces himself to shrug it off as he gets back to electrical, aiming a smile and a wave down the hallway to the flash of cyan blue he sees at the corner of his eye that he assumes is Josh cutting through storage. They’d been bemused and maybe a little irritated when they’d first seen their suits, of course the higher-ups wouldn’t waste money on matching suits, or even suits that weren’t mostly blindingly bright. But ever since the lights had started dying on them at least twice a day, they’ve been more grateful for them. Admittedly, Louis’ black suit, Jordan’s brown, and occasionally Rian’s dark blue are difficult to see in the light of the torches they’ve all started strapping to their shoulders, but for the most part, the gaudy suits stop them running into each other too much.

They have a crew meeting that night, once all their tasks and repairs are; hopefully; done for the day. They update the list of equipment that’s started failing on them, and try again to find a connection between the failures, hoping to find a cause so they can put an end to this constant running back and forth. As always though, it’s the most random list with no possible connections that they can see. The electrics need rewired; the reactor needs to be restarted yet again; the engines need to be aligned; the shields need primed; data needs to be uploaded for sometimes the fifth or sixth time. The list is ridiculous and unrelenting. As they do every other night, they eventually give up and agree that the ship is just old and kinda shit, and they’ll just have to suck it up.

Once the meeting’s over, most of them retire for the night. They need to have at least a few of the crew working through the night, and Dan’s grateful that it isn’t his or Louis’ turn as they head to the pod they share. They’ve all taken to wearing their suits all day, they can never predict when the oxygen will crap out on them again, and none of them are willing to risk being caught without a personal oxygen supply when it does. But their pods have individual supplies that have never failed on them, so for the first time all day, once the door to their pod slides closed, Dan and Louis are able to peel their suits off and get some much needed skin contact.

They don’t speak for several minutes, just standing in the middle of the pod, swaying slightly as they hold each other and soak up the other’s presence. Neither of them even cares that they both smell musty and sweaty, they’re used to it by now and it’s such a low priority that it’s not even on the list. Finally, they pull away a little, still in each other’s arms, but not as close to clinging as they had been, smiling at each other as Louis reaches up and brushes Dan’s shaggy hair out of his eyes.

“It’s been a very long day of not seeing you.” Louis murmurs, and Dan hums in agreement, leaning into his touch for a few moments before leading them both to the bed. It only takes them a few minutes to get comfortably wrapped around each other, and even less time to be sound asleep.

The next morning, Dan’s disappointed but not surprised when he starts his shift and sees that pretty much everything they fixed yesterday needs to be fixed again, along with a few others. And the lights are out again, so they have to do it all by torchlight. Great. He starts in electrical, hoping to get the lights back on sooner rather than later, but he’s only been working for a little more than an hour when he’s interrupted. He startles and drops the wires he’s working on as a panicked cry comes over the comm. He thinks it might be Alex or Rian, but other than the voice sounding vaguely American, he can’t tell anything else.

There’s a jumble of voices and no-one’s making sense and the original voice stammers and sobs for too long, until Dan can’t take not knowing anymore and sets his comm to trace the source.

“Upper engine!” He has to say it three times, the third time practically roaring into his comm, before he’s heard, and by then he’s already making his way through the lower engine to get there. He’s the first to arrive, and finds Alex cowering in the corner, pointing to a work station that’s mostly tucked behind the engine itself. 

Dan gets halfway across the room before he sees what Alex is pointing at, immediately backing up again as he fumbles for his comm.

“Everyone get to the cafeteria, now.” He chokes out, and there’s some grumbling about how he’s making them run all over the place, but he ignores it. He forces himself to take a few calming breaths and goes to Alex, wrapping his arms around him as best he can in their bulky suits, and forcing him to turn away, leading him out of the room and towards the cafeteria.

Once they’re all there, Dan sits forward and makes it obvious he’s about to start, but Chris interrupts him.

“Wait, Lee’s not here yet, we should wait for him, shouldn’t we?” He asks, and they all stare at the two of them as Dan flinches and Alex whimpers and curls in on himself tighter.

“That’s why we’re here.” Dan starts, pausing as he tries to figure out how to say it, before deciding blunt and to the point is the best option. “Lee’s dead. Murdered. We found him behind the upper engine.” He finally announces, pulling Alex into his side and curling in with him as the rest of the crew gape at them in stunned silence for a few seconds, then explode into noise, freaking out and shouting over each other and all trying to prove their own innocence without accusing anyone else.

Finally, when it’s clear Dan isn’t going to take charge, Louis quietly reminds Josh that he’s second in command. Josh startles a little at that and nods, standing up and slamming his hands down on the table. They all jump and go quiet as they stare at him, and he nods to himself as he sits back down.

“Alright, now that I can hear myself think. New rule: no-one goes anywhere alone, we travel only in groups of two or three. Now, we’re going to write down where we all were when Alex freaked out on the comms, and make a list of who we last saw and where we saw them. I don’t want to accuse anyone, and I don’t want it to be any of us, but the fact is, someone on this ship murdered Lee, and we need to find out who.”

Dan and Alex both look a little more with it by the time Josh is done, and he nods happily, he’ll take over when his captain needs him to, but he’ll always prefer deferring to Dan. It takes a while, but they get both of the lists done, and they end up more confused. They were all either in the same room as someone else, or had recently seen someone, and none of them had been near the upper engine.

“When was the last time anyone saw Lee? We’re assuming it happened right before Alex found him, but you said he was tucked away in the corner, he could’ve been there ages.” Matt suggests, but Jordan shakes his head.

“I saw him about ten minutes before, we passed in here. I was going from medbay to weapons, he was coming from admin to the engine.” He explains, and Josh glances around, silently asking if anyone saw him after that. They all shake their heads and he nods, adding it to the list, subtly checking it again, but Jordan was in weapons with Chris for the entire of the ten minutes between passing Lee and his body being found.

They go back to work soon after. They don’t want to, but they still need to keep the ship running long enough to get them to Polus. Josh reminds them of the new rule as they get up from the table, and everyone is happy to comply, splitting into groups of two until only Josh, Dan, and Louis are left. Josh is about to ask them what needs done first, but Dan shakes his head and motions for them to follow him. He takes the long way around so they won’t have to pass through the upper engine, Rian and Oli had volunteered to move Lee’s body to the cold storage in the medbay, but he knows they won’t be anywhere near done yet. Josh is about to start whining when Dan leads them into the security room and sits down at the computer, and they both figure out what he’s doing. They don’t have many cameras on the ship, no-one had seen a reason for it, but there’s one right outside the security room, and one outside medbay, they don’t cover the doors to the upper engine, but no-one could’ve gotten to it without passing in front of one of those cameras.

They lean over Dan’s shoulders to watch as he rewinds the footage from each camera and lets them play, eyes flicking back and forth between the two screens. The three of them make surprised noises at almost the same time as they get to the footage of Alex leaving admin and moving towards the engine. Dan grunts and rewinds them both again, further this time, in case one of them had lied about where they’d been. But even rewinding it back to breakfast, the last time they’d all been in the same room at the same time, the footage checks out against who said they were in the engine and when.

“What the fuck is going on?” Dan mumbles, still staring at the screens. All three of them jump when alarms start blaring above their heads. Oxygen and the reactor at the same time. Fuck. “You two get the reactor, I’ll head to O2.” Dan barks as they pull their helmets on, and they both nod, glad they’d been so close as they run across the hall to fix the reactor as Dan takes off sprinting for the opposite side of the ship.

It’s not until Dan finishes fixing the O2 output ten minutes later that he realises what he’s done. He’s all alone, and with his helmet on, he has basically no peripheral vision, he’s a walking target. The lights on the output are still flashing yellow, it’s working, but it’ll be a few more minutes before there’s enough oxygen in the ship for him to safely take his helmet off. He fumbles for his comm, stubbornly ignoring the way his hand shakes.

“Josh, Lou, where are you?” He’s forcing his voice to sound calm, but he’s not sure how well it’s working.

“Just finished with the reactor, how’s it going there?” Josh’s voice comes through immediately, and Dan feels a tiny bit safer being in contact with them.

“I’m finished, but it’s not safe yet,” he reports, even though he knows he doesn’t have to, they all have screens on the left forearm of their suits giving them updates on every system in the ship, they know they can’t take their helmets off yet. “I broke your fucking rule though.” He finishes, and his voice definitely isn’t calm now. He hears them both swear, then Louis sighs.

“Keep talking, doesn’t matter what about, just make sure we can still hear you and start walking, we’ll meet you in storage.” He says, and Dan nods, then rolls his eyes at himself and verbally agrees.

He hesitates just outside the door to O2, there isn’t another camera until the hallway outside admin, he’ll have nothing but his comm to keep him relatively safe until he meets the two of them in storage. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to be brave, jumping slightly when Louis scolds him for going quiet. He rambles about what had needed fixed with the output while he tries to think of something to actually talk about as he starts walking. After a minute, he realises neither of them have ever met his family; none of the crew had even met each other until they’d been quarantined to prepare for the trip, and he and Louis hadn’t started dating until five months into the journey; so he talks about them.

He tells them about his mum, about his sister and her wife, about how he lost his dad when he was barely twenty, but it’s the reason he’s here, his dad had always told him his only limit was the edge of the universe itself, so he’d decided the best way to make him proud was to take it literally. He’s almost run out of things to say when he rounds a pile of crates in storage and whimpers in relief as his torchlight hits the bright cyan suit. They both crowd him, checking him over as they all shakily agree to figure out a better system for emergencies. They were lucky this time, very lucky.

They spend the rest of the day jittery and on edge, but they make it to their nightly meeting with no more emergencies and no more casualties, and they let themselves relax the tiniest fraction. They add another person to the night shift so they can still work in pairs, and agree that they won’t even sleep alone. They stick to the same pairs they’ve been in all day, and Josh drags his mattress into Dan and Louis’ pod and sleeps on the floor.

They spend the next few days nervous and tense, but things are unnervingly quiet, even the electrics seem to be behaving themselves. On the first morning after Lee’s murder, Dan gives an order that no-one stay in the same pairs for more than one day. They still don’t have even a slight inkling of who the killer might be, and he doesn’t want anyone to be lured into a false sense of security from spending several days with someone who might end up killing them. They agree it could be dangerous to make a rota, but they do keep a list of who’s already paired with who, and make sure not to repeat any pairs.

On the third day, Dan’s full of dread as they start the day shift in total darkness. It seems their grace period is over, and he can’t help but be terrified of what might come today. He pairs off with Rian, and they get to work on fixing the lights again. By the time they stop for lunch, they have it as fixed as it’s going to get. The lights still flicker and go out completely for a few seconds every now and again, but it’s obvious they won’t manage anything better until they’re able to unearth new wires from the many crates in storage.

He finally manages to take a full breath when the crew meet up for lunch and no-one is missing, and he’s almost able to laugh at himself for being so sure that the state of the lights had anything to do with whether they’re safe or not. Once they finish lunch, he and Rian start searching crates for the wires they need. They’re interrupted before long, this time by the screen on Dan’s suit chiming at him, and he taps it to bring up the notification. _Admin: Captain’s Authorisation Required._ He sighs and motions for Rian to follow him, it’s only maybe ten feet away, but they won’t even risk that.

He sees the screen that needs his attention lit up as soon as he walks in, and makes his way around the central panel in the middle of the room. He stops dead as he’s about to round the last corner, Rian walking into his back with a soft sound of surprise.

“What’s… Oh.” Rian trails off as he sees what Dan’s seen. The bright pink suit prone on the floor behind the panel, the dark hair poking out of the top plastered to his head with blood.

“Who was paired with Tom today?” Dan asks into his comm, his voice faint and wavering. He doesn’t get a reply straight away, either they’re struggling to remember or they’re too worried about how awful his voice sounds.

“Um. I think it was Matt.” Josh finally answers, and Dan clenches his jaw.

“Where is he?” He grits out, and they all hesitate again. _“Where the fuck is he?!”_ He roars, ignoring the chorus of hisses and uncomfortable noises as his voice makes their comms squeal with feedback.

“Where’s who? What’s happening?” Matt’s voice finally comes over the comm, and Dan growls softly.

“You. Where the fuck are you.” He snarls, and Matt isn’t the only one he hears gulp in fear.

“I went to the bathroom. Tom said it’d be okay cause you and Rian were so close by and the camera’s right outside the door.” Matt finally admits quietly, and Dan makes himself calm down. He can’t begrudge or deny them bathroom breaks, and Tom’s logic had been sound.

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Dan sighs, taking a moment to think. “Alright, everyone head to the cafeteria, I have something to do first, wait til Rian and I get there.” He finishes, getting various agreements over the comms as he leaves admin, Rian close behind him as he leads the way to security.

By the time the two of them make it to the cafeteria, the rest of the crew have figured out what happened. Oli and Matt are huddled together looking shellshocked, and no-one blames them. Dan can’t help feeling proud of Oli though, despite everything going on. It’d be so easy for Oli to blame Matt, to lash out at him for his little brother’s death, but he isn’t. He, like the rest of them, knows that Matt isn’t to blame, and he’s chosen to cling to him instead.

Dan smiles gratefully at Josh as he hands both of them tea and he and Rian sit down. He tries to show without speaking that his gratitude is both for the tea and for taking over while Dan had needed him to. Everyone has tea and someone to comfort them and they’re all as close to calm as they can be, and that’s Josh’s doing, and Dan really couldn’t be more grateful. Josh returns the smile and pats his shoulder, and Dan’s pretty sure he gets it. He takes a few sips of his tea to fortify himself, then turns to the rest of the crew.

“Alright. I think you’ve all figured it out, but I’ll say it anyway, for the sake of clarity. Tom was killed in admin. We checked the cameras and it doesn’t make sense. Matt leaves, Tom comes to the door to the wall panel, and goes back inside, and no-one else comes near until Rian and I find him. No-one could’ve gotten in without us or the camera seeing them, I just don’t get it.” He tells them, and Oli finally looks up.

“Why did you two go into admin?” He asks softly, and it’s clear there’s no accusation there, just curiosity.

“I got an authorisation request.” Dan explains, gesturing to his left forearm, and most of them nod, but Matt frowns.

“You shouldn’t’ve, we weren’t doing anything we’d need your code for.” He insists, and now they’re all frowning. Dan wouldn’t have gotten a request without a manual input from one of the crew, and Tom wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t need to. So either it was meant to be a signal for help, or whoever killed him did it so they’d find him faster. And neither of those makes sense.

They do the same things they did after Lee, make lists of who was paired and where they were, even though they know there’s no point. No-one went in or out, and no-one’s partner left their side. But they have no idea what else they’re supposed to do, so they make lists and keep track, and hope it’ll help at some point. They’re even less inclined to go back to work this time, so Dan issues an order to stick to essential work only, and they reluctantly leave the cafeteria.

They’re just about done for the day when Dan freezes and looks around. Something isn’t right but he’s not quite sure what. He’s working in the reactor with Rian, Oli, and Jordan, and… Oh. That’s what’s wrong.

“Where’s Oli?” He asks, trying to stay calm for now, he could be right outside the door. Rian and Jordan look up in surprise and look around.

“He was here a minute ago.” Jordan shrugs, and Rian nods. Dan goes to the door and looks up and down the hallway, then goes across to security to check for him. 

Once he’s sure Oli isn’t nearby, he gets on the comms.

“Oli, where the fuck are you?” He barks, admittedly a little pissed off that he’s wandered off on his own after everything that’s happened. The comm crackles quietly as they all silently wait for Oli’s reply, but it never comes. Dan curses softly and taps at the screen on his suit, sending out a ping to trace Oli’s comm. “Everyone stay exactly where you are, I’ll let you know when I find him… Once I’m done giving him a bollocking.” He tells them grimly, managing to relax a little at the soft laughs he gets in return.

He motions for Rian and Jordan to follow him, but they’re already on his heels. The trace is coming from the opposite side of the ship, of course, so they start walking quickly. They don’t see anyone until they pass the comm room, Alex and Louis peeking out of the door so they can try to distract themselves from their nerves with forced casual chatting to Matt and Chris in shields. The four of them point him up the way, but it’s not really needed, Dan can hear the faint chirps from Oli’s comm already.

He’s glad when he gets to the crossroad at O2 and Navigation and finds Josh and Max are still working, studiously not looking across the hall, where the chirps are most definitely coming from.

“Wait out here.” Dan orders, but Jordan stops him.

“You’ve dealt with all of this so far, it’s not fair you keep having to.” He insists, but Dan shakes his head.

“It’s my job, the captain deals with it so the rest of you don’t have to.” He argues, but Jordan insists, putting a hand on Dan’s chest and gently pushing him back.

“I got this one.” He says with finality, walking in before Dan can argue again.

Dan realises he should probably be worried that they’re all acting like they already know Oli’s dead, but at this point, going off alone and not answering his comm, especially when it’s chirping the way it is, is basically all the proof Dan needs. He’s upset but not surprised when Jordan comes out a minute later, biting his lip as he shakes his head.

“He’s gone. He left a note on his screen, said he wanted to confront the killer, to know without a doubt who killed Tom without putting any of us in danger, so he waited til I was with you and bolted when we weren’t paying attention.” He tells them sadly, and Dan sighs.

“Any chance he managed to leave any kind of hint to who killed him?” He asks, but it’s clear from the hopelessness in his voice that he already knows the answer before Jordan shakes his head.

“He looks shocked and angry, but nothing that’ll help us,” he confirms, and Dan nods.

They’re all hopeful they’ll get some kind of grace period again, but that doesn’t make them any less vigilant when they start their shift the next day. They stick to random pairs, and work in two groups of four and five as much as possible. Dan’s working in electrical with Matt, Max, and Chris; trying to fix the fucking lights _again_ ; when his screen chimes with a request for his authorisation again. He’s filled with dread for a moment, before he realises it’s from an automated program he set up weeks ago. He sighs in relief and taps his comms.

“Hey Josh, can you-” he cuts himself off when his comm crackles and spits, growling in frustration. “Great. Now the fucking comms are down. Matt, can you…?” He trails off, managing to relax again when Matt nods easily, closing up the panel he’d been working on and moving to leave the room with Dan.

It takes them longer than they’d like to get the comms up and running again, but finally they’re fixed, and Dan goes to ask Josh to give the authorisation again, but this time he’s interrupted by a waiting message from Max.

_“I know you said not to split up, but I just thought of something, I need to go to the medbay and check the bodies, and Chris is in the middle of a delicate process, I’ll be quick and we’ll both be careful, I promise.”_

Dan and Matt stare at each other in horror for a moment, before they take off running, sprinting as hard and as fast as they can back to electrical. They’re too late. Dan runs into the room and immediately skids in a large pool of blood, Matt’s quick reflexes as he grabs him under the armpits the only thing keeping him on his feet. He steps more carefully as he moves towards the yellow suit on the floor, the only part of Chris he can see in the dark until he’s practically on top of him. He reaches out to check for a pulse, but moving Chris’ hair out of his face reveals the long, deep slash across his throat, and he knows there’s no point. 

They leave the room again, taking a moment to wipe the blood from their boots so they won’t keep slipping, then start making their way through the engines as Dan opens his comm.

“Everyone to the cafeteria, now. Except Max, you stay where you fucking are.” He snarls, closing the comm before any of them can reply.

“Do you think it’s him?” Matt asks nervously as they get to the upper engine, and Dan grunts.

“I don’t know. But whether he held the knife or not, Chris’ blood is on his fucking hands.” He growls, and Matt bites his lip as he can’t help but agree. He tries to think the best of all of his crewmates, but he just can’t understand how Max could be so fucking stupid.

They finally make it to the medbay, stopping almost as soon as they walk in.

“Well, he might be a damned idiot, but at least we know he didn’t kill anyone.” Dan sighs, his anger shifting to Max’s behalf now, that he’d been killed by such a coward. He’s been stabbed in the back at least nine times that Dan can see, and Dan is so fucking angry that the bastard couldn’t even do Max the decency of looking him in the eye as he killed him.

They take a quick look to make sure Max hasn’t left any sign of whatever epiphany he’d had, but it looks like he’d gone straight to the cold storage drawers and hadn’t even had the chance to open any of them before he’d been ambushed. Whatever lead he might have been able to give them is gone now. They go to the cafeteria, and it’s only maybe thirty steps, but it’s all the time Dan needs for his anger to boil over into rage, which is only worsened by the five of them sitting there looking innocent and confused. He snarls and points at Josh, Louis, Jordan, and Rian in turn.

“You, you, you, you. Admin. Now. One of you has been killing my friends and I will sit here with each of you for as long as I fucking have to to find out who.” He barks, and though they all look scared and hurt by the accusation, none of them argue, the four of them moving to admin with Matt at their backs. He stands halfway in the door with his back against the wall, where he can see the four of them clearly and still see Dan where he’s glaring at Alex across the table.

He spends hours with each of them, and gets nowhere. The five of them had been in weapons together the whole time Dan and Matt had been fixing the comms. They hadn’t been able to see each other much with the lights out again, but they’d made sure to keep talking at all times, and they all insist that none of them had gone quiet for more than a minute, nowhere near enough time to get to the other side of the ship, kill two people in separate rooms, and get back again. It doesn’t matter how long he spends grilling them, or how angry he gets, their stories all stay the same and they all still match up.

He finally gives up, exhausted and confused and scared and showing none of it to the crew, and implements a new rule. They stay together as a group of seven at all times, they are to eat, sleep, work, go to the bathroom, everything together, no exceptions. He can see that none of them are all that happy about it; he isn’t either; but none of them dare to complain, whether out of fear of his temper or of looking guilty, he neither knows nor cares. No-one else dies on his watch. Not one.

Three weeks pass like this, and it works, no-one’s any more happy about the arrangement than they were at the beginning, but they’re all still alive to be annoyed about it, which is the only thing Dan cares about right now. They’re three days away from Polus now, and Dan’s slowly, warily starting to let himself feel hopeful that this might finally be over soon. The seven of them are recalibrating the shields when the lights fail again, but this time several alarms start blaring at the same time. The reactor and O2 are both failing at the same time. 

They need to split up. Two can do the reactor together, but they need at least one person in two separate rooms to fix O2, and they can’t abandon the shields, they’re heading into a meteor field and they can’t risk getting any closer to it without the shields up and running. Dan almost panics, but manages to push it away and uses the five seconds he needs to pull his helmet on to think.

“Right. Alex, Louis, you stay here and finish the shields; Rian and Jordan, go sort the reactor; Josh and Matt, go do the O2 output in admin, I’ve got the other one.” He orders, then takes off running before any of them can argue. 

Dan’s just finishing his end of O2 when he hears footsteps behind him. He forces himself to take a slow, deep breath and finish the last part he needs to, then slowly turns. He wants so badly to be relieved when he sees Louis standing there, but he knows even they can’t afford the risk of trusting each other right now.

“Lou, I told you to stay on the shields with Alex.” He chides, just as the blast door behind Louis slides closed. Normally the burst of panicked voices that comes from his comm as the others are all locked in too would scare the hell out of him, but all he can focus on now are the glowing eyes in the dark. “You aren’t Lou.” He whispers, relieved and heartbroken and terrified all at once. “Is he dead?” He asks, desperate to know, but the creature doesn’t answer, only starts to slowly move closer.

This time Dan can’t hold back the panic, he wishes he could find words to give to the rest of the crew to console them before he dies, but he can’t seem to focus on anything but the thing in front of him.

“What are you? What do you want? Just tell me what you want and I can do it for you. You’ve been watching us for god knows how long, you know I’m the captain, whatever you want, you know I can make it happen.” He babbles desperately, finally managing to make himself go quiet as the creature stops, tilting its head as it stares at him in the silence. Wait. Silence. They’d all left their comms open when they split up. The rest of the crew heard everything. Fuck. After a moment he decides he doesn’t care and leaves his comm open. “We can make a deal, yeah? Just tell me what happened to Louis, and promise you won’t hurt anymore of my crew, and I’ll give you whatever it is you’re here for.” He bargains, and it cocks its head more.

“What about the others?” It asks softly, voice almost still Louis’, but wrong somehow.

“What? I don’t understand,” Dan tells it, and it smirks.

“You thought I was the only one? My brothers killed at least two of your people while I was right at your side. Do you want the others back? Whose faces they use?” It asks, and Dan almost dares to hope, if it’s asking if they want them back, then they might still be alive.

“Yes. Please. Whoever you’ve taken, we’ll do anything to get them back, please.” He begs, and it laughs softly.

“Alright. You can have your friends. And then you will turn around and go home. You will not land on our planet. You will leave before you ever get close enough to wreak your havoc and destruction.” It spits, and he nods eagerly.

“Okay, I can do that, we’ll do it right now. Just open the door and let me go across to navigation and I can override the autopilot and change it to take us home.” He agrees, and there’s a tense moment of silence before the lights flicker on and the blast door slides open.

It follows him across the hall, watching intently as he overrides the system and plots a new course to take them back the way they came. Once he’s done and the ship has started creaking and shuddering as it slowly turns, it nods and motions for him to follow. It leads him back to shields, where the rest of the crew are waiting. Except it’s not the crew, it’s Josh, Matt, and Rian looking terrified, and two more imposters wearing Alex and Jordan’s faces.

“They’re alive? The three of them? They’re okay?” Dan asks, and the three imposters smirk.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say they’re _okay_ , but they’re alive, and unharmed, for the most part.” Not-Alex smirks, and Dan finally starts to feel like he can breathe again.

“W-what about Max, and Chris, and…?” Josh stutters, trailing off as Not-Louis waves his hand to show they get the point.

“No, they actually are dead. We kept the ones whose faces we used, in case we needed them as bargaining chips, but we were just planning on killing you all.” He tells them, no hint of compassion or remorse in his voice.

Not-Louis nods to Not-Alex, and he goes to the corner of the room, lifts the vent cover, and snakes his way down into the vent. They’re quiet for a few minutes as they wait, and then there’s thumping and banging under the floor, coming closer, and a voice that’s definitely Louis’ this time cursing. They emerge after a moment, thin and pale and covered in dust and cobwebs, being pushed along by Not-Alex, who looks maliciously gleeful at the furtive, scared glances the real Alex keeps giving him. Dan isn’t the only one who bursts into relieved sobs as the four of them rush forwards and cling to them. He keeps Louis pinned tight against his chest with one arm; not that Louis would be going anywhere if he didn’t; as he touches Alex and Jordan’s faces, still sobbing as he checks them over as best can and makes sure the imposters were telling the truth.

By the time they all calm down, the imposters are gone. Dan uses the screen on his wrist to scan the whole ship, making sure to include the vents this time, but there’s no sign of them. They’ve held up their end of the bargain, thank god. They spend a few days crowded together in the medbay, running every test and scan they can think of to make sure the three of them are as okay as they can be. It’s on the second day that Josh notices and points out that they haven’t had anything crap out on them since the imposters left. Literally every problem they’ve been having these past few months was them. 

Once they’re sure Louis, Alex, and Jordan are totally fine; and definitely totally human, they run a few tests for that just to be absolutely sure; they try as best they can to relax and settle in for the journey home. Now that they aren’t running around in circles fixing everything constantly, there’s very little work any of them actually have to do. The six of them follow Dan into admin and watch as he sits at a computer and does the most important task any of them have left. Send a report back to Earth. He words it as severely as he dares, cringing a little at how much it feels like he’s giving orders to his superiors. But he needs them to know how dangerous it is. And if he’s honest, he wants there to be a trail he can use to make sure they’re held responsible not only for the deaths of his friends, but for the deaths of anyone else if they’re stupid enough to ignore him and send another ship anyway.

With that done, they can more or less relax. Well, five of them can. Louis doesn’t think he’s capable of relaxing as long as he keeps having to go looking for Dan in the middle of the night, or as long as he keeps finding him curled up on the floor beside the cold storage drawers, sobbing as he begs their friends to forgive him for failing them.


End file.
